Quote History Quoted:Ton of good replies here, thank you. Didn't think we'd have many here with dedicated machines.
I have been scoping out the
La Pavoni Stradivari.
Going to see what kind of pricing my brother can find on them where he lives.
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I learned to make espresso and cappuccino on a (less fancy) La Pavoni sometime around 1980. Awesome machine. Very much a rip-snorting industrial beast that is fun to use but demands respect. Makes outstanding espresso.
The only thing I would point out, and this is not necessarily a negative, is that the water reservoir is also the boiler. What this means is that you have a fixed capacity. Before you can open the top and pour in more water, you must power off the machine and bleed all the pressure off, and then let it heat up again after you've filled it up. So, for large groups of people when making big milk drinks with lots of volume and steaming, this can be less than ideal. I don't know what the capacity was on the one I learned on, but apparently some have more capacity than others; there is an "8 cup" and a "16 cup" Stradiveri:
https://www.1stincoffee.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=+pavoniOn the semi-auto machines, the water is held in a reservoir that is not pressurized and is accessible at all times, and an electric pump is used to pull water from the reservoir into a boiler, and from there push it through the coffee.